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Late Stage Patriotism In America at the Lynwood Arts Commission Gallery
Opens June 29th, 2013, with a reception to be held on Wednsday July 10th from 7:30pm-9:00 pm
Seventeen selected prints from the Late Stage Patriotism In America series will be on display from June 29th, 2013-August 7th, 2013 at the Lynwood Arts Commission Gallery in the Lynnwood Public Library, Lynnwood, WA. This is the first public exhibit of the series, which altogether contains over 55 images depicting contemporary life in the Untied States as witnessed from "Main Street", where infrastructure is crumbling, surveillance is ubiquitous, the economy does little to sustain the bottom 99%, and yet a reflexive vernacular patriotism prevails.
Blue Sky Gallery - the Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts
I was chosen to be included in the 2013 Pacific Northwest Photography Viewing Drawers. Ten prints from the Above/Below series are included in the drawers and are viewable from March 2013 until March 2014.
Blue Sky established the Pacific Northwest Photography Viewing Drawers ("the Drawers") program in 2007 to feature a juried public archive of original prints by contemporary photographers based in the region. Visitors to Blue Sky's galleries in Portland are welcome to enjoy work in the Drawers by simply opening any one of the archival flatfiles, or by asking the Gallery Attendant for assistance (in order to see more than the image on top). The Drawers program has quickly become a favorite aspect of Blue Sky's ongoing programming, available to approximately 25,000 visitors annually.
I'm pretty sure that these folks in North Idaho are not selling cords of animal fur. But mostly I was intrigued by the sign with the image of a generic barn on it. As I stood there I could hear multiple chainsaws roaring in the background as if it were a constant feature of this location..
Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs CityArtists Grant
In 2012 I was chosen to receive a CityArtists grant from the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs to create Alternate Views, a QR code enabled, smartphone delivered photography experience in the Seattle neighborhoods of Capitol Hill and Fremont beginning in July of 2012. The project was a success with at least 60 participants a day for six weeks and many mentions in the press. The QR placards have come down but the piece can still be experienced by visiting the smart phone optimized web site where you can use Google Maps to find ViewSite locations. For more information visit the Alternate Views information web site.
On a recent trip to Portland a friend took me to a derelict Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. This site contained a particularly compelling example of one of the signs of our times, abandoned business real estate. I have a collection of images that document abandoned signs, and this location held a stellar example. This structure, once proudly announcing another outlet of the ubiqitous chain, now signals this store's failure. Stripped of all graphics, only the bones remain, yet it's difficult to avoid imagining the oversized twirling bucket of fried chicken or to conjure up the Colonel's head. It's fascinating to see the elaborate, now rusting mechanism and to think about how many of these signs were fabricated.
This is the mansard roof with the skeleton of the little pseudo cupola atop that KFC. When a fast food franchise store goes out of business somebody makes sure that the signage is stripped of any connection to the chain. This reminds me of the airlines' practice of sending a crew out to paint over their logos when a plane crashes. No company wants to be associated with a plane crash or a business failure. But in the case of a contemporary fast food chain, removing the logos is not enough to erase the identity. The great innovation, starting with the golden arches of McDonald's in the '60s, was making the building itself the sign and the trademark. When a franchise store goes bust, this clever practice backfires.
On a recent trip to Portland I saw this chronology of cars with their biege backdrop in the SE section.
On the Portland trip I explored the waterfront neighborhood of Linnton and its industrial attractions.
Bee plunging for pollen in an oregano blossom, spotted on a walk in the neighborhood this summer.
This summer a trip across eastern Washington state took me through the north end of Ellensburg and past this gas station/convenience store, offering an amazingly symbolic sight. The image is now part of the Late Stage Patriotism series.
During a remodel in the summer of 2011 this bottle of hydrochloric acid was discovered in a shoebox. It solved the mystery of why, for the past 25 years, so many things were corroding in that concrete storage room.
A display in a tire shop from my 2010 trip to Oaxaca, Mexico.